Gananoque mayor seeks support for health-care letter

Gananoque Mayor John Beddows will look for support from his fellow colleagues to send a letter to the province in regards to the health care needs of Ontarians.

Specifically, he wants to send a letter about the provision of health care services, requesting that the province consider some options as elements of a strategy to fulfill primary health care needs.

Gananoque’s council meeting gets underway at 5 p.m. on Tuesday at Town Hall.

The options to consider, as listed in Beddows’ letter, are to allow nurse practitioners to hold Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP) billing numbers, and to fund OHIP for the increase in billing; to fund medical and nursing programs at a level sufficient to make up for lost revenues from loss of foreign students and historical funding cuts; reduce patient administration burden on family medicine specialists and restore patient treatment hours per practitioner.

The mayor also wants to call on the provincial government to prioritize admission to medical schools for students who commit to stay in Ontario and practise in acutely underserved rural and small communities; prioritize admission to nursing programs for students who commit to stay and practise in Ontario; increase OHIP service payments to a level that raises the income of family medicine specialists in Ontario to be competitive with, or above, that paid by other Canadian jurisdictions, and sufficient to encourage medical students to enter family medicine.

Beddows would also call on Queen’s Park to increase provincial taxation to fund service levels that enable proximate primary care access for all Ontarians. The mayor would also like the province to allow Ontarians to register on primary care provider waiting lists at their new place of residence without de-listing from their current primary care provider.

Town council will also consider authorizing Beddows to circulate the letter to municipalities across Ontario and request that they endorse it, and submit their endorsement to Premier Doug Ford, Ontario leader of the Opposition Leader Marit Stiles, and federal Health Minister Mark Holland.